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Health IT

A survey of senior information technology and security professionals in healthcare found the most likely source of a data breach to be email—which the vast majority of respondents admitted to using frequently to transfer protected health information and consider critical to their organization.

Optum, the consulting and services arm of health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group, announced at the launch of a $250 million venture capital fund investing in data analytics and digital health firms.

David Shulkin, MD, secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, asked a House committee to redirect $782 million of his agency’s budget to begin the switch from the VA’s legacy electronic health record system to a new Cerner platform.

Like most healthcare conventions this year, the 2017 meeting of the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) featured plenty of talk about healthcare policy coming out of Washington, D.C. With much of the attention taken up by the Affordable Care Act’s future, AHIMA’s leaders were considering the future of a different law: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Recent Headlines

Medicare and private sector claims data will be permitted to be sold or shared to organizations which will use the information to improve care, as long as those recipients follow privacy and security requirements laid out in newly finalized CMS rules.

Zimmer Biomet Holdings Inc., a global provider of musculoskeletal healthcare, and LDR Holding Corporation, a global medical device company, have announced that both boards of directors have approved a definitive agreement under which Zimmer Biomet acquire all the outstanding shares of LDR for $37 per share in cash, a value of approximately $1 billion.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology unveiled a website offering more detailed and easier-to-understand information about certified health IT products.

Change Healthcare, a provider of software and analytics and technology-enabled services, has announced a partnership with SourceMed, a provider of outpatient software solutions and revenue cycle management services for surgery centers.

Even in the world of Star Trek, technology hadn’t advanced this far. Medics on the Enterprise still had to lug around little handheld devices. But here in 2016, researchers have developed an ultrathin, flexible film that, one day, may become an electronic second skin.